Concerning the methods of killing mammals smaller than cottontails, the
accounts by Nichols and Nichols (1935:297-299) and that by Svihla
(1931) corroborate Glover's (1943A) account, as do also the accounts of
Miller (1931B:164) and Moore (1945:257). The latter says that his
captive male, from Gainesville, Florida, customarily bit its rodent
prey at the base of the skull and used the feet to manipulate the live
prey. Miller (_loc. cit._) emphasized that his male weasel (_M. f.
longicauda_) grasped where it could, used its snakelike body to coil
over the prey and shifted the grip of its teeth to the nape of the neck
or back of the skull. The captives that I have had [one from Salt Lake
City, Utah; three from Contra Costa County, California; and the same
individual reported upon by Miller (1931:150)] customarily employed the
techniques of killing small rodents that were described by Glover and
Miller (_loc. cit._).
Allen (1938:225-229) experimented with the ability of four different
males of _M. f. noveboracensis_ from Michigan to kill adult
cottontails. The method used was to place the weasel in a cage of
quarter-inch hardware cloth approximately three feet long, two feet
wide, and two feet high. The bottom of the box was covered with several
inches of straw. One cottontail was offered to each weasel. In two
instances the weasel attacked and bit the cottontail, was struck by the
hind feet of the cottontail, retired from the attack and died a few
hours later as a result of the blows of the cottontail's hind feet. In
the other two instances the weasel rendered the cottontail helpless by
severing the neck muscles from the skull. Subsequently an incision made
by the weasel, in each of the two instances gave access to blood on
which the weasel fed until it was full, in one instance by licking
"blood as a cat laps milk." One rabbit was subdued in 10 minutes and
the other in 15 minutes. Allen (_op. cit._) points out that cottontails
form a considerable portion of the weasel's food and thinks that they
are killed in burrows more easily than they were in the cage.
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